The Living God, page 26
He batted her away angrily, but she reasserted her grip on him, dragging him close to her face. “If you will not run, I will drag you. Understand?”
Saran pushed him forward, shoving him along with her body. “Odan! Come on.” But Odan didn’t follow, and when she looked back, she found him stalking in the opposite direction toward Desmav and Coban. “Odan!”
The Ice Mage grabbed the men from behind and drove ice-covered hands into their chests. Each one arched back, gasping on a dying breath as Odan wrapped his hands around the still-beating organ in their chests and clenched tight.
“Odan! No!”
Beside her, King Yarin D’mor laughed.
The light in Odan’s eyes grew blinding bright. Ice sprouted from every pore and orifice Desmav and Coban possessed until their entire beings were covered in a hard, cold shell. Their bodies grew, limbs elongating until they stood eight feet tall. Each hand sprouted daggerlike fingers, and the hard ice shell that encased them slowly bled translucent. They stood like sea glass statues before their Ice Mage maker. Odan slowly removed his hands, revealing vibrant red beating hearts in the breasts of his creations. When his work was done, the Ice Mage slumped against the wall.
Above them the ceiling cracked. The stairs shook. Dust wafted through the air as the Earth Mage tore the walls down around them.
“Protect us,” Odan told his Alikons. “Let nothing pass.”
He collected himself and turned from them. The Alikons grumbled an unearthly agreement to his command and faced the opening to the stairwell, shoulder to shoulder, cold icy holes for eyes watching for trouble. Odan did not meet Saran’s eyes as he brushed past her, grabbing hold of his king and dragging him off down the hall.
“You’re a bastard,” Saran seethed, skipping to catch up.
“I did what was necessary to protect my king, nothing more. Oh, and by the way, Princess, this is a dead end.”
“Not entirely dead.”
“The next levels are flooded.”
“There is a way out; we only need to swim to it.”
Saran eyed her weary father as he stumbled along, struggling with each breath. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him exert so much energy. Not since she was a little girl and he was healthy and whole.
They went down a short staircase but stayed straight along the outer edge of the castle and cliffside overlooking the Andrian Sea. The sound of running water grew louder, starting as a soft trickle before slowly transitioning into a gentle roar.
“This was an escape route centuries ago … a means to get the king out, should the palace be stormed. I used to hide behind that door to eavesdrop,” Saran whispered. “When Father spent long hours in the room, I would go out this way. Then, one day, the old walls cracked and a spring opened, flooding the path. If we can swim past the flooded area, it comes out through a grate in the courtyard. We just have to avoid the tug of the water toward the cliffside, where the engineers opened another crack to try to rid the passage of water.”
The Alikons behind them roared. The walls shook and chunks of stone rattled off the ceiling to plop down in the water ahead of them.
“Wonderful,” Odan muttered. “We’ve got to try to swim a dangerous, pitch-black passage with a decrepit old man and hopefully not get sucked out the drain.”
Odan paused as his feet sank into black water halfway down the stairs. He gauged the temperature of the water and turned back for Yarin, grabbing his arms and helping him down into the water, until it washed up around their waist.
“You should swim first,” Saran said to Odan, propping Yarin against the wall. She eyed her father’s hunched and silent form. He hadn’t said a word since the brisk laugh he’d offered as Odan stole the lives of Desmav and Coban. While uncharacteristic of him, she thanked whatever gods had blessed her with his complacency.
“If this is some clever ruse to murder me …”
Saran glowered at him in the very, very limited light they had. “If I wanted you dead, I would have stabbed you when you turned good men into Alikons.”
Odan scoffed and waltzed off down the passage before taking one step too far and plunging into the water. Saran edged away from Yarin, listening and waiting for Odan to pop his head up again. After several long, agonizing seconds, she almost believed he’d completely abandoned them until he finally shot out of the water with a wet gasp.
“It’s a short swim and not hard to navigate. We won’t be troubled by the drain.”
“For a short swim, it sure took you long enough.” Saran sighed, turning back to grab Yarin. “If we both take him, we can get him across with little effort on his part, aside from him holding his breath. You can do that, right, old man?” Saran grabbed Yarin and pulled him off where he sat on the steps, half-submerged in water. He hung as deadweight in her arms. “Yarin?” Saran shook him harder. “Yarin!” She stared down at the withered old king, shock stealing the words out of her mouth. She felt at his neck for the pulse. “Wake up, you old goat!”
Yarin didn’t wake. Saran lowered her ears to his chest but heard no heartbeat. “Father?” The word slipped from her lips, belonging to some small part of her that still longed for him to be the father she always wanted, a tiny part not yet beaten into submission. After a long silence, Saran let him slip back down to lie in the water. “We ran him to death.”
Odan rushed through the water, grabbing hold of Yarin’s body and hauling him out to rest high on the steps. He checked the king, just as Saran had, his hand trembling ever so slightly as it rested on the old man’s forehead. The Ice Mage glared at her. “You ran him to death.”
Odan flopped into the water, sitting on the stairs just below Yarin’s resting body. In the darkness, Saran could barely make out the Ice Mage’s form, but she could feel his sadness in the change of temperature around them. The water grew colder.
Yarin had been her father, yes … but he’d been Odan’s in some strange way as well. If truth be told, he’d been a far better father to Odan than he’d ever been to her.
“How is it you’re not dead?” Odan’s voice trembled out, half anger and half sorrow. She hated him for loving her father so much, for finding cause to love a man who had loved her so little.
Saran stared at their shadows in the darkness. “The rules. If he died of old age or sickness, and not another’s hand, I would not be harmed. I’m free from his stupid curse, but not this stupid Bind. If I’d known that the key to my freedom lay in exercise, I would have made him run a long time ago.”
Odan’s eyes flared blue, and the water around her solidified for a second before melting away once the Ice Mage wrangled his anger, or perhaps because attempting to harm her hurt him.
Odan stood slowly, the water sloshing around his legs. “We will come back for his body,” he decided. “We will bury him as a king.” Saran imagined he needed to say that aloud to justify the need to abandon the corpse of his beloved adoptive father.
She fiddled with the metal around her wrist, frowning into the darkness. The one person who could give her the key now grew cold in the bowels of a broken escape tunnel built for the sole purpose of preserving his life. She was trapped within the city, and without her magic, for the foreseeable future.
Behind them, the Alikons raged and roared and screamed before finally silencing. The Ice Mage shivered, his cold eyes glowing as the power he’d given returned. The Alikons were no more. Odan grew quiet, listening behind them, absorbed in their deaths. The unfortunate part of creating life was that it always hurt when it ended.
Odan descended deeper into the pool with her. “I wonder what your Alikon would look like.”
Saran stiffened. “Nothing special,” she muttered, turning away from him and wading out into the water.
“Have you ever made one?” Odan asked, stepping up behind her.
“Once,” she replied, feeling at the edge of the steps with her foot, looking for the point where Odan’s feet had dropped out from under him before. The idea of dropping unprepared into black, icy waters didn’t appeal to her, even on a good day.
“What did you do with it?”
Saran frowned at the water. She curled her fingers in it, thankful for the dark around them. “I married him.”
Silence fell between them, with the cool rush of water filling the void. Odan broke the shocked pause with a loud, deep-bellied laugh. It echoed harsh off the walls. “Keleir? But he’s not misshapen or transformed.”
Saran clenched her eyes, regretting her admission. It slipped out, a secret she’d been holding for five years, and she’d admitted it to Odan of all people. “It is different! I didn’t alter him into some elemental beast or something he’s not … I simply changed what might have been. I reached into Keleir and found what he was without the Oruke. I made him that. He was there all along, trapped behind a wall the Oruke created, and I willed him into life. Without our connection …”
Odan gleefully finished the terrible thought for her. “That version of Ahriman ceases to exist.”
“He ceases to have control. He always exists, trapped inside, helpless in his own body, able to experience without acting.” Saran clenched her hands tight. She felt a shudder in her heart, a flutter that didn’t beat quite right. The escape had been a perfect distraction from Darshan’s admission, but now, as she spoke of Keleir, the truth came flooding back to her. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now … He’s dead. They’re both dead.”
The ache blistered her heart so profoundly that it stole her breath. She wanted to fade into tears, drift into the water, and grieve. But she wasn’t that type of woman. There would be time to grieve, but not now, and not in front of Odan.
“Let’s get out of here.” Saran stepped down and readied herself to swim when Odan grabbed her arm and pulled her back a step.
“Can you do it?” His voice trembled with anger, but something else. Something hidden just beneath the surface of his quiet rage.
“Do what?”
His hand tightened on her arm. “Lead us?”
Saran looked aghast at Odan, who hated her and accepted her as his queen all at once. She could not see him well, nor could he see her, but she knew he had to sense her shock ripple in the water. “Why do you care? Why would you want me to?”
“Yarin raised me. I thought of him as a father. I think that is why I hate you so much. I would have killed for him to see me as his child, to adore me as his son. You were his blood and you treated him with such disrespect, and I couldn’t stand to watch. You brought catastrophe and chaos to what he created, and I wanted nothing more than to prove my loyalty to him by showing him how unworthy you were. With him gone, I have no other purpose. I know no life but this one. I am bound to serve you because of Ophelia’s curse. All I want to know is, will you lead us? Do you have that in you? Or will you give in to Darshan?”
Saran swallowed. Out of all the people in the world she knew, Odan was the last person she thought to ever have deep conversations with in the depths of such uncertainty. The princess stepped into the blackness of the water without providing Odan an answer.
FORTY-TWO
THE SUN HAD just burned off the morning mist when Rowe ventured to the edge of town and stood at the wide-open gates, staring down the empty road to the edge of the horizon. He listened to the wind, the trees, and the birds, but other than that he heard nothing. The villagers hid in their homes, or in cellars, quietly waiting for the worst to blow over. A few had joined his men at the village wall to wait for the Adridian army.
The rebels with him were at the blacksmith shop, just at the edge of town, near the gate. They gathered around the forge fires, despite his incessant urging for them to ready themselves for Yarin’s army. Eventually he gave up. With a nearly empty village, he saw no reason to stand at the gate to block the army from entering.
But the army never came. Deep down, Rowe knew they wouldn’t. Yarin, while crazy, wasn’t stupid.
The Lightning Mage kicked the loose dirt with his boot. He couldn’t stand being here in this place while Saran sat trapped in the castle. He watched time waste away before his eyes when he would be of better use there, with her. He lifted his gaze to the sky and listened once more to the world for any sign of an army. Finding birds and the rustle of trees, he turned back for the blacksmith’s shop. They would all be of better use in Andrian.
When he turned to go to them, the rebels were already waiting behind him.
“I guess we’re all thinking the same thing. Let’s help our brothers in Andrian,” he told them. “I’ll Port us there.”
“We don’t need your help,” the rebel to the far right said, spitting on the earth at Rowe’s feet. “We can Port our own way with our own Mages.”
Rowe frowned at him, ignoring the spit on the earth before his temper got the better of him. “Fine, I’ll go my own way.”
“That won’t be happening either.”
Rowe snarled. “And what makes you think you can stop me?”
A sharp pain struck him in the back, digging up beneath his ribs. He sucked in a breath and pulled away, stumbling on his feet to look behind him. Morning light glinted off the dagger in the scrawny man’s hand. The Lightning Mage growled and drew his sword. “I am on your side!”
The man they called Joseph frowned. He wore a horrible scar across his face. “That may be true, but Darshan needs you dead. So … dead you shall be.”
Rowe’s brow knit tight together. An ache splintered up his spine and stabbed into his skull. His step faltered. “What?” The betrayal stole the strength of his voice, and it faltered on his lips as little more than a whisper.
“You’re not useful anymore. Your visions aren’t useful anymore. The Vel d’Ekaru is dead. Long live the King and Queen of Adrid, Saran and Ishep Darshan!”
Rowe shook his head, like the man’s words reached inside his mind and scrambled his brain. He repeated them to himself, just to make sure he wasn’t mad, that he wasn’t dreaming, that he hadn’t heard him say …
Remember my words, Rowe Blackwell, and know that you will be betrayed, the Prophetess’s voice whispered in the back of his mind.
Again Rowe shook his head, feeling the trickle of blood down his back. Darshan wanted Rowe dead so that he would not come between the rebel leader and his ultimate goal: a union that would legitimize his rule as king. Rowe had laid his trust in the wrong man. Gods, a man he’d taken to like son to father. A man he’d idealized. A man he’d obeyed and loved.
Darshan had not been sneaky with his plans. He’d hinted to them. Time and again he’d mentioned transitioning power with marriage, and Saran always brushed it off as though it were a choice. The rebel leader had catered to them, indulged Rowe and Keleir, two men hated by his rebels, and pretended to let them help with his cause. He’d even pretended to care for Rowe. But he’d planned this all along.
The urgency to get to Andrian roared in him.
He had to find Saran.
Lightning ignited in Rowe’s eyes, crackling bright neon blue. The warm hum of electricity ran through the blade of his sword. “Well, come kill me, then,” he growled and slung his sword around at them. White-hot bolts of lightning arched off the metal, colliding with the twelve men. But energy expended reverberated back to him, as if they wore magic shields to protect them. It struck his chest, tossing him off his feet to land with a hard, rolling thud against the half-dried mud.
The smell of singed leather burned his nose, and smoke wafted off his body. He didn’t move for a long minute, and the men, thinking him dead, crept closer. One of them that Rowe knew to be an Earth Mage rolled up his sleeve to show off the crude makeshift version of a Saharsiad gauntlet, the kind that protected Mage hunters against magic as much as it blocked them from using it. Each of the twelve men around him wore one to protect them from his magic.
Rowe winced at the gauntlets, disgust twisting his features. His eyes brightened with wisps of electric current, and above them the sky began to turn black with thunderheads. Lightning popped against the clouds, every crackle in Rowe’s eyes reflected in a web across the sky. He knew it did him little good to use magic against them when they wore those bonds, but his rage would not be quenched.
“A Mage that wears the gauntlet of a Saharsiad willingly is an abomination,” the Lightning Mage sneered. He moved his hands to his singed chest, rubbing at the ache in his bones. “You forsake your oath to the Core. Continue this, and she will abandon you. All things come with a price, and we were born of Her.”
“It is you whom She has abandoned. The Core and the Prophetess. Where are They now in your hour of need? Where is your brother, the Vel d’Ekaru? Where is your princess?” The rebel spoke, but Rowe caught the shift in his eyes as his fingers began to remove the leather trappings on the gauntlet. Even these men wouldn’t risk the Core abandoning them, no matter what they thought of him.
The wind grew harsh, tossing their cloaks and hair about. What little dry dirt remained on the surface of the earth became a cloud of dust around them. The lightning that danced across the sky crashed to the ground off in the distance, and the earth shook with thunder. One by one, the rebels dropped their gauntlets and took up their swords.
The lightning struck the roof of a cottage, setting the thatching aflame. It popped and danced down the main road. The men around him collected, but Rowe did not move. He clenched his fists against the leather he wore and straightened his spine against the earth. A tickle started in the air around him, a current of energy that sent the hairs on their skin out like spikes, and the hair on their heads floated in strands about them.
Poor, uneducated village men who did not know the power of a storm or that a man born of it could call down the fire of heaven upon them.
The one with the dark scar across his face, Joseph, glowered at Rowe. His scarred visage had always been vaguely familiar to the Lightning Mage but never more so than now. But the way Rowe remembered it, Joseph had been looking up at him. Joseph snarled, “Accept this fate, murderer. Accept the punishment you deserve for the blood on your hands! For murdering my family.”
